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Europe ramps up push for peace

Israel's indifference to a generous financial, economic and defense package offered by the European Union, combined with the failure of the US peace initiative, have persuaded the Europeans to change the rules of the game and seek a proactive peace.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius delivers a speech during a debate on Palestine status at the National Assembly in Paris November 28, 2014. French lawmakers are set to hold symbolic parliamentary votes over the next month on whether the government should recognise Palestine as a state, a move likely to anger the Jewish state. France does not classify Palestine as a state, but says it could extend recognition if it believed doing so would help promote peace between the Palestinians and Israel.      REU

One can assume that the background material presented to US Secretary of State John Kerry in preparation for his Dec. 15 meeting in Rome with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu included choice comments made by Netanyahu’s partner in government and in the Likud Party, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, regarding the administration of which Kerry is a senior member.

Israel Army Radio aired a recording Dec. 10 in which Ya’alon explained the reason for what his listeners consider the excessively slow pace of construction in the settlements. The minister told rabbinical college students in the Etzion settlement bloc that the slow construction stems from pressure on the part of the Barack Obama administration and urged the youth, impatient to pour additional cement into the settlement construction cauldron, to bide their time. He remarked that the government was being careful “not to antagonize” the United States too much and ended his remarks by expressing his relief that the days of the current administration in Washington were numbered. “This administration won’t be around forever,” he told his listeners.

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